Projects

Surface Finish Enhancement of Additively Manufactured Components Through Novel Electro-Mechano-Chemical Polishing (Funding Agency: NASA, Research Collaborator: Marshall Space Flight Center NASA)

Additive manufacturing (AM) has revolutionized the creation of high-complexity components with low material wastage for aerospace, automotive, and medical applications; however, the AM process cannot meet high industry requirements in terms of surface roughness. AM parts have an inherent surface roughness (typically Ra >10 µm), micro-roughness, and large-scale waviness, negatively impacting their functional performance. The research efforts devoted to the project is aimed at developing an advanced capability for polishing various geometrically complex metal alloy components (NASA HR-1 and GRCop-42) fabricated at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) NASA’s L-PBF AM technique. The material removal mechanism is a synergy of friction between select resin particles, the moving sample, and the electrochemical reactions at the interface between the resin particles and the sample under the influence of an electric field. Sample surface morphologies are analyzed using optical microscopy (OM), non-contact surface profilometry, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) before and after polishing process to evaluate the capability of developed technique.

Research Products: